'Coco Before Chanel'

Audrey Tautou makes thin 'Coco' worthwhile

by Bill Goodykoontz - Oct. 22, 2009 07:20 AMThe Arizona Republic

There's a scene midway through "Coco Before Chanel" in which the title character, played by Audrey Tautou, strolls along a beach with her lover, admiring the ocean and taking in the outfits worn by the other women there.

She also is ruthless in her assessments. A woman with too many accessories is wearing silverware. Another woman's dress is so tight she might split in two, and so forth and so on. Her eye is impeccable, if many years and fashion seasons ahead of its time, something that doesn't discourage her but steels her resolve.

In other words, Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel knows what she's talking about, even if, at this point, she's far from a fashion pioneer. She's a kept woman, a mistress of one rich playboy while having an affair with another.

But she is headstrong. She wears and designs clothes and hats not just of her own making, but of her own vision. Eschewing the outlandish hats and frilly dresses of the early-20th-century in-crowd, she favors clothes modeled on what men wore, straightforward and simple.

Tautou plays her as distant and cold, perhaps not a surprise for someone dropped off at an orphanage by her father, who never returned. Gabrielle and her sister learn to sew, and sing in a bar; Gabrielle picks up the nickname "Coco" from Etienne Balsan (Benoit Poelvoorde), a rich man with whom she has an affair, eventually moving into his estate home.

He hides her away from his friends at first, claiming constantly, if halfheartedly, that he'll send her away.

Coco, however, is resourceful. She isn't powerless in the relationship. Instead, she uses it to gain position in society. She begins designing hats for Balsan's friends, and they are, to this crowd, jaw-dropping in their simplicity (a later lover will jokingly call her an anarchist).

Then, the unthinkable happens: She falls in love. Arthur "Boy" Capel (Alessandro Nivola) is a friend of Balsan. Smitten with Coco, Capel negotiates to "borrow" her for a couple of days, as if she were one of Balsan's beloved horses. A love triangle of the lowest possible wattage ensues. By this time, Coco has had enough of the kept-woman life and strives for something more. That she gets it comes as no surprise.

It's the getting there that makes "Coco Before Chanel" worthwhile. We are used to seeing Tautou play the sweetheart. Here, she's anything but. Constantly smoking, dour, unsmiling, critical, she plays a character difficult to warm to but fascinating to watch (observing Chanel was probably more fun than living with her). She does not suffer fools gladly, even though fools surround her.

This is a thin film in many respects, but not in Tautou's full portrayal of a complex woman. (Poelvoorde also is quite good, making the often boorish Balsan sympathetic.) It's not just a nice change of pace for Tautou, but a fully realized one as well.